Gloria: In Her Own Words

Feminist Icon Gloria Steinem

Produced by Emmy®-winning documentary filmmaker Peter Kunhardt and HBO’s own Sheila Nevins, GLORIA: IN HER OWN WORDS combines recent interviews that showcase Steinem’s sharp sense of humor and compassion with archival footage and photographs from the 1950s to today.

What emerges is a portrait of a crusader whose singular focus has been to fight for equal rights for women, both in the U.S. and around the world. Beginning with her career as an undercover reporter writing an exposé on the working conditions of Playboy Bunnies, the film chronicles how Gloria was transformed by hearing women’s horrifying and humiliating experiences while covering a New York abortion hearing in 1969. Since then, she has been ubiquitous on the front lines of social activism, co-founding Ms. magazine in 1972, participating in countless women’s rights marches, and making numerous media appearances.

Despite decades of attacks and criticism from the Right, and a number of personal setbacks in recent years, Gloria today remains one of the most outspoken and visible symbols of the women’s movement.

Related videos

This is the very first film of the modern women's movement. Produced in 1971, it caused controversy and exhilaration. It was widely used by consciousness-raising groups to generate interest and help explain feminism to a skeptical society. The film looks at female socialization through a personal look into the lives…

An intimate and nuanced investigation into the life of one of the most influential and provocative thinkers of the 20th century. Endlessly curious, passionate and gracefully outspoken throughout her career, Susan Sontag became one of the most important literary, political and feminist icons of her generation. This beautifully constructed documentary…

Between 1933 and 1974, North Carolina ran one of the most aggressive eugenics programs in the world, sterilizing more than 7,600 men, women and children.
One-by- one, they gathered the "unfit" -- the poor, the undesirables -- and took them aside. They began with the mothers and their daughters, sterilizing…

Shot on location in five U.S. cities, WOMEN'S MARCH is a story about democracy, human rights, and what it means to stand up for your values in today's America. On January 21, 2017, hundreds of thousands of women marched on Washington, D.C. That same day, hundreds of sister marches took…

A thoughtful look at the late outlaw writer and punk icon whose formally inventive novels, published from the '70s through the mid-'90s, challenged assumptions about gender roles, sexuality, and the literary canon. A beguiling and intensely contradictory figure, Acker is best known for books which creatively appropriated texts from Great…

In the early 1970s, feminism became a force that reshaped the relationships between men and women in the most fundamental ways. Divorce rates spiked as women chafed under their traditional roles but, where men could adapt, marriages became stronger than ever. With the widespread adoption of the contraceptive pill, women's…

When feminist filmmaker Cassie Jaye sets out to document the mysterious and polarizing world of the Men's Rights Movement, she begins to question her own beliefs. Jaye had only heard about the Men's Rights Movement as being a misogynist hate-group aiming to turn back the clock on women's rights, but…

Geraldine Ferraro: Paving the Way is a feature-length documentary about the life and legacy of the trailblazing woman who made history in 1984 as the first female Vice Presidential nominee on a major party ticket in the United States.
The film profiles Ferraro's life from an impoverished childhood, the struggles…

This episode tells the story of the exceptional women--past and present--who have taken the world of business by storm. Told by female business leaders themselves, this is a candid exploration of what it takes to make it and a celebration of the extraordinary individuals who, over the course of 50…

The filmmaker questions her sister, herself and others about the dreams and hopes they had growing up as girls in contrast to the reality they face as women. Topics include: childhood, athletics, careers, motherhood, body image, sexual assault and self-esteem. Made in 1990, this film documents a growing awareness of…

The story of the birth of the modern Women's Movement. When Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique came out in 1963, millions of American women felt the constraints of 1950s post-war culture, which confined them to the home or to low-paying, dead end jobs. At the same time, another group of…

As the Movement achieved long-sought goals, a new generation of women were re-evaluating some of its most basic assumptions, especially the balance between work and family. By the 2000s, the movement was again under attack from conservatives seeking to rollback abortion and contraception laws, and by younger women fleeing the…